Be careful what you dream on, dreams come true
Be careful what you dream on, they can turn on you
Revenge is a dish they say best tasted cold
But revenge digs two graves, makes a young person old
Be careful what you dream of, dreams come true
Paul Kelly, Be Careful What You Pray For. 2008
This is Part Two of two looking at NT Senator Jacinta Price’s 2025 election campaign. You can read Part One here.
Dearth of the True Believers
First stop on Price’s back-of-buggery tour was Calare in the central west of New South Wales where she backed up Liberal Party candidate Sam Farraway (a former NSW Upper House member who resigned in November 2024 to give his “full attention” to winning Calare), who was facing 3-term member, former National Party minister and well-regarded good bloke and Independent Andrew Gee.
There are several slices of delicious irony in Price turning up in Calare, particularly considering her strident opposition to the “Yes” referendum and Gee’s past history with the Nationals.
Indeed, it was the National Party’s position on the “Yes” referendum proposal that persuaded Gee to leave the party he had loved and supported most of his life.
As he noted in a parting swipe as he left the Nationals in December 2022:
I was once a true believer but I’m not anymore … The recent decision by the National Party to oppose the Indigenous Voice to Parliament … has really brought home to me the importance of being able to stand up and be counted.
On election day Gee was returned with 56 per cent of the vote and a healthy two candidate preferred buffer of 13,000 votes.
Price had no more success the next day in the NSW central coast electorate of Dobell, where she caught up with a few supporters of Liberal candidate Brendon Small in a tin shed.
On polling day Small donated a handy 3 per cent swing to incumbent Labor member Emma McBride who is safer than ever with a 20 per cent, and 20,000 vote margin on two party preferred numbers.
Yet another shotgun marriage
After a day off the hustings Price doubled-down on defeat in Labor’s Sport and Aged Care minister Anika Wells’ electorate of Lilley, on the shores of Moreton Bay north of Brisbane.
There Price did a shopping centre walk-through with Liberal National Party (the LNP is the product of another Nationals—Liberal shotgun marriage) candidate Kimberley Washington.
They were chaperoned around the shops by Luke Howarth, soon-to-be-previous member for the neighbouring coastal electorate of Petrie.
Howarth – member for Petrie since 2013 – suffered a 5.5 per cent swing against him and lost his seat to Labor’s Emma Comer by a hair over 2,000 votes.
Also joining failed candidates Washington and Howarth was the LNP’s Terry Young from nearby Longman.
Earlier in the week it seemed that Young’s return in Longman was assured, squeaking through with a 471-vote lead over Labor’s Rhiannyn Douglas but with a 3 per cent swing against him.
But, as absentees, declaration, provisional and late postal votes are counted Young’s lead dropped to 281, then 231 and as of the weekend to 219.
National’s candidate Sam Farraway in Calare; and the LNP’s Brendon Small in Dobell, Kimberley Washington in Lilley and shopping centre chaperone Luke Howarth all failed to get over the line.
It doesn’t get much better in Longman, where pundits reckon Rhiannyn Douglas will catch the LNP’s Terry Young, maybe as early as the Tuesday and just in time for the Liberal Party leadership meeting.
Batting 1—4, or is that …
Jacinta Price was batting 1—4 – with the very real chance of 0—5 – for the first week of her 3 star motel tour.
With friends like that …
Price returned to Alice Springs for the Easter weekend then joined CLP candidate for Lingiari Lisa Siebert at the Darwin peri-urban pre-poll booth at Coolalinga. She was next seen at the ANZAC Day ceremony and the Songkran (Thai New Year festivities) in Darwin.
Mid-way through the campaign’s final week Price surfaced in Anne Webster’s ultra-safe electorate of Mallee in the remote north-west of Victoria. Long-term National Party member Webster gained a modest swing to carry home nearly 70 per cent of the votes.
While on the ground in the Mallee Price and Webster spent time with members of the Australian Climbing Association at Mount Arapiles, where they met with parties involved in a dispute over the storied rock climbing destination and sacred sites for the Wotjobaluk people of western Victoria.
Price gave a long interview and made an announcement of the Coalition’s policy on Aboriginal heritage legislation and protections, evidence of which doesn’t appear to have surfaced outside of the Climbing Association’s YouTube channel and draw your own conclusions as to who Price was more supportive of.
All aboard for the “a big job ahead of her” tour
The final destination on Price’s whistle-stop tour of the hard-to-find-and-too-far-away electorates was the division of Spence on the northern fringes of Adelaide where Liberal’s candidate Daniel Wild was definitely tilting at windmills trying to knock off incumbent Labor member Matt Burnell.
Burnell ended up with 65.5 per cent of the votes and a very handy 31,000 vote margin.
In late January long-term Price fan-boy Daniel Wild spoke about Price to Caroline Di Russo on the Rita Panahi show on Sky News after dark.
… she’s going to play a very key role in the campaign. If the coalition do form government, look, there’s a lot of red tape that needs to be cut. It’s a big job that she’ll have ahead of her.
When he’s not playing at being a Liberal Party candidate, Daniel Wild is the Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs.
As Guy Rundle noted over on Substack.
The IPA indeed did not have a good election. Their fondest hopes were put on Daniel Wild, one of their instapundit gunslingers, running for Spence, held by Labor with a large margin. That didn’t stop David Penberthy, News Corp columnist … from writing a ludicrous boost piece for Wild in The Oz, suggesting he was in with a chance … Labor sent Wild home in a barrel.
Why was Price a no-show in the NT bush?
Apart from her photo-shoot at Uluru two and a half weeks earlier, Price’s Facebook and socials posts indicate that her visit to the Coolalinga booth just before Anzac Day was the closest Price got to a remote polling booth between the announcement of the poll in late March and polling day in early May.
I’m happy to be proven wrong – and please let me know if I am – but it beggars belief that any candidate wouldn’t publicise visits to remote polling booths and communities on their socials or that it would surface on or in the TV, radio or newspapers, particularly when the more than 30 mobile polling teams are abroad right across the NT.
Was Price in witness protection or was she too “toxic” out bush?
It is tempting to conclude that one reason Senator Price was “sent to Coventry” was because she was in a kind of political witness protection, the rationale being that if she was kept out-of-sight-and-mind then there would be no more embarrassing “Make Australia Great Again” or similar gaffes.
As Chris Kenny of Sky News observed on the Monday following the election (but without receiving a relevant response) Price was, “hardly front and centre” … “then you kinda disappeared again,” and “your own lack of prominence in the campaign and linking to Trump must have frustrated you enormously.”
Another view I’ve heard was that Price was kept away from the bush because she was “toxic,” to use the most common term.
The third hypothesis is that the CLP has effectively abandoned the NT bush electorates to the Labor Party and Independents, a thesis supported by an analysis of the 2024 NT general election in August 2024.
That is something I’ll elaborate on in the next piece, which will examine the conduct of the House of Representative campaigns in Lingiari.
As noted above, I wrote to the CLP’s Secretariat in Darwin asking these questions but … crickets.
Finally, Price’s absence from the NT must have been particularly galling for Lisa Bayliss, the CLP candidate for Solomon, the House of Representatives electorate based around the NT capital Darwin and nearby satellite city of Palmerston.
Bayliss was up against three-term incumbent Luke Gosling, who trailed Bayliss by 2,000 votes on first preferences but has been returned for a fourth term courtesy of Greens and Independent preferences. Bayliss took a 7.3 per cent chunk off Gosling, who will still have a handy 1,200 vote margin.
Widening the electoral gap
So, what if Price had spent more time campaigning in the NT instead of wasting time and valuable campaign funds and resources supporting failed campaigns – all bar Anne Webster in Mallee and (maybe) Terry Young in Longman?
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below – I’d love to hear your thoughts (please keep them civil).
That’s all for now.
Later this week the AEC will have the full NT Senate booth results, including the thirteen or so bush mobile polling booths not available to date – that will allow for a more comprehensive analysis of the Senate results in the NT..
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